King County law enforcement officials meet with patients

Fri, 10/09/2009 - 10:56pm — Ben

We received word via the Potline that the ACLU was hosting a meeting between King County law enforcement officials and representatives of various medical marijuana groups. Some confusion and concern existed about the purpose of these meetings, and two invited activists refused to attend because their lawyer wasn't allowed.

Via the intertubes we received a copy of the meeting agenda and two documents with draft guidelines for medical marijuana collectives or cooperatives. We are placing these documents online for general consumption.

To get the full story on this tempest, we called Alison Holcomb from the ACLU. She said that, after the Satterberg memo was issued to clarify what the King County Prosecutor would and would not prosecute, law enforcement had some questions on how to identify the groups, or collectives, or coops -- or whatever -- the memo refers to in Policy #3.

Apparently, King County law enforcement have been discussing what this means with one another. Alison is in touch with SPD Captain Mike Meehan, and was informed of these discussions, and the fact that law enforcement felt it would be worthwhile to discuss the matter with actual medical marijuana groups -- or collectives, or cooperatives, or etc.

Medical marijuana attorney extraordinaire Douglas Hiatt was neither invited to, nor allowed to attend the meeting. Two representatives of Compassion in Action were specifically invited, but refused to go, because Douglas -- their lawyer -- was not allowed to go with them.

This is true, according to Alison Holcomb. She explained that this group of law enforcement officials specifically requested to not have Douglas present. The reasons for this, she explained, are three-fold: 1) they feel constantly attacked in meetings with Douglas, 2) they feel Douglas monopolizes time and conversation, and 3) they feel they understand Doug's position, and hearing more of it would not help the dialogue they are trying to have with this meeting.

So that's the story. The draft guideline documents are certainly interesting, so take a look, we hope you find them interesting too.